I know there’s been some discussions about cleaning locomotive wheels, but I’m curious about what everyone does to clean car wheels. The club to which I belong gets dirty track due a variety of causes from plastic wheels to dust falling from the ceiling from passing trains. We clean the track but we’ve found even the metal wheels get gunky over time. So, what do you guys do?
Megaman,
you can have all wheels cleaned, locos and cars, while you operate your layout by using a LUX wheel cleaning station as featured in the Model Railroader Magazine last March.
You can also check it out here: http://www.mrsonline.net/
Regards,
Art
I put a small peice of rubbing alcohol soaked paper towel over the track pushed down to the profile of the rail. And a foot down the line another paper towel, but dry. I use a locomotive with a long electrical pick up base and run the train over the wet towel and across the dry one. The dry paper towel catches alot of black. When it gets too dark, I just get another piece of dry towel. Cheap and easy.
On really grime covered wheels, I rub the edge of a small flat screw driver along the tread to get rid of the layer of gunk. Then I alcohol and q-tip clean it to a polished finish.
I’m cheap too.
With something like this I would say that the bigger your layout, the more practical it’d be. My layout plans incorporate some hard-to-reach places where this would be useful as well as a great deal of track that would be too tedious to clean all at once.
I’m easy! [:D]
Tom
My question was what is the crud on the wheels made from and where does it come from,it was answered on goo gone forum , and I MEAN answered, try http://www.tonystrains.com/technews/cmx_chemist_review.htm this should give you a start.
tatans…
I read your info…It may be great to use laquer thinner as the chemist suggested. I have seen flash fires and a friend told me of a bout with laquer thinner and a stray static spark from touching someone with a nylon shirt…not pretty…
Vapors , pilot lights and sparks do mix, like gas fumes in a boats bilge…be very cautious…John